Left 4 Dead 2: When It's Time
by hidden-in-a-tree
Summary: I've wished for death long before it finally took me into its embrace. Oneshot. Nick's POV. Tragedy/Character Death/Drama.


**Author's Note:** Oneshot. Nick's POV. Tragedy/Character Death/Drama. Short, sweet, to the point.

**Disclaimer: **Of course, nothing mentioned is mine.

**Acknowledgements: **Howard Shore, you inspire me. Those tingles you gave me? Genius. A thank you to both Amanda and Sean for editing this.

**Summary: **I've wished for death long before it finally took me into its embrace.

**When It's Time**

I wish I'd never said, "I have not come this far to die now." If there's ever something I wished for, that would be it. Especially since every night I would squeeze my eyes shut as tight as they could go, forcing myself not to give in to the agony inside my heart, and I would ask for death. I don't know who I asked. Anyone, really – anyone who was omniscient and was listening to the guy in the white suit camped out with two other people in a shitty safe house.

Yes. Two.

Coach hadn't made it. He died weeks ago.

I try not to think about it. It shouldn't have happened. He was the guy that we all looked up to. He was the one that we all figured would live the longest. You couldn't kill Coach, we thought to ourselves, he's indestructible. He'll always be there.

And then he wasn't. Dead. Beyond saving. Ellis, in a tearfully joking manner, had suggested that Coach wasn't truly dead, just missing for the moment. Maybe – maybe he'd turn up in a closet, and as we drew nearer we'd hear his calls to let him out.

Rochelle and I didn't know what to think of Ellis' words. The ranting of a lunatic, most likely. However, Ellis had to have some slack … it was the end of the world, after all. He'd just lost Coach – we'd all lost Coach – and he seemed to be growing weaker physically, too.

A couple of days after Coach's early demise – or was it right on time? – Ellis began to fail. I don't know how else to describe it. He no longer smiled. He no longer told stories about Keith. Hell, he barely talked anymore. Rochelle tried to get him out of his funk, but to no avail. He began to waste away.

I couldn't take it. During those first days, I felt like I was falling from a great height into some deep crevasse and Ellis was descending into Hell's depths alongside me, but I couldn't talk to him and I couldn't catch his attention. More to the point, I couldn't save him. I couldn't save myself.

There was something more terrible in seeing Ellis stop trying than all I'd ever been through in my entire life. And I'd been through a lot.

I reckoned that if he decided to stop bothering with living, I was done too. Given up. I gave up. Rochelle, though, she could see what was happening to both of us, and she didn't know how to respond. Her unwavering enthusiasm and optimism began to falter.

And that's how I came to be here, standing stock still in the open, feeling the vibrations of a Tank rushing toward me. I gave up. I am waiting to embrace that which Coach had fallen prey to: death. Mysterious, enchanting, quiet death.

I'm tired of listening to gunshots. I'm sick of all the bloodshed. I can't keep living just to see Ellis wither away into nothing. Already he looked emaciated, his skin going a funny shade of yellow. It made me ill just to look at him. He lagged behind Rochelle every time we left a safe house, and each time I dropped behind him, guarding him. Risking my own life to save his. He couldn't move very fast, and his reaction time had slowed beyond compare. He was mainly just a burden now. A burden that none of us wanted to be rid of.

Far away, it seems, I hear the Tank roar, the sound waves crashing around me, making my body feel like it should be knocked off its feet. Powerful. Maybe this death won't be as quick and clean as a bullet to the temple –

If it's possible – and I know it's not, I know it well, but God, it feels like it's _true_ – everything has begun moving slowly. Real life slow-mo, if you will. Impossible. Absurd. But true. I can see the Tank moving toward me, but it's moving so much slower than it usually does. Even its roar seems to be out of sync with its movements, like a badly dubbed slow-mo Japanese movie.

With each step it takes, my knees tremble and I can feel the vibration from its footstep all the way up to my ears. It has its sights set on me; I have no doubt about that.

Fear? No. I have none anymore. The only thing I've been afraid of for a while is what is happening to Ellis. I can't live – can't stand to see –

I shake my head, all thoughts stopping in their tracks. I won't have to worry about Ellis for much longer.

I'm enjoying these last moments. Taking it all in. Smelling the air, while ignoring the metallic tang of blood; tasting the wind, and pretending it's not despair that I'm finding on my tongue; reveling in everything that makes me alive. If I could stop the imminent, the foreseeable, the obvious, I wouldn't.

Did Coach know that there was no point in fighting? No point in trying to go on when everything seems to be telling you that it's okay, it's just your time to go.

As said in Charlie Brown, "Sometimes I lie awake at night and I ask, 'Why me?', then a voice answers, 'Nothing personal, your name just happened to come up.'" When it's our time to go, we go. We don't always go gently into that good night, but even if we fight and struggle, we still end up acquiescing to what Fate or God or whomever wanted.

We have no choice.

Do I have a choice? Do I have to die at this time? I ask myself, gently and calmly, as I see the Tank pick up a discarded car, its windshield long since broken.

I can hear someone screaming, now, the words intermingled with my name –

_(is that someone cursing __my name__ or pleading with me?)_

– but I don't turn. It's Ellis. I can tell by the pitch, the way he says – screams, shrieks, bellows – the word 'Nick'. Deep down in my heart, I wince, but I still don't turn. I don't heed his calls.

Is he standing a safe distance away, his shotgun hanging limply from his hand? Is he telling me to move? to run? I can't tell. It all sounds like noise.

I can't help but feel a twinge of the most deep-rooted sadness penetrate my cold, heartless armor: Ellis will never forgive himself for this. He and I, we'd made a secret pact. He and I. A pact that neither of us had to discuss; a pact that wasn't truly real, just a figment of our imaginations. Fuck that, though. We both know it's there. That bond that keeps – kept – us together.

As he stands, watching the Tank move to pick up the car, its horrible yells echoing off the empty buildings, does he finally feel alive? Does he feel that there is still something worth living for?

I blink once and then shut my eyes. I hope that he feels alive. I hope that he knows that he is stronger than this, stronger than I am. I hope he knows that I … that I –

And maybe, somewhere deep within Ellis, within the secrets that hide behind his beautiful blue eyes, he too –

It's too late for that now. He knows that I'm breaking the connection between us. And once severed, it can never be rebuilt, never fixed. I'll be dead, and he'll still – hopefully, hopefully, hopefully – be alive.

I remember, as I stand waiting with my hands hanging loosely by my sides, the stiff fabric of my disgustingly stained suit swaying in the wind and rubbing against my hands, the time I'd told Ellis that he might one day have to go on without me. He'd laughed outright at me, the sound near unheard of in the dark and dank safe house we inhabited for the night. He told me he didn't want to go on without me. He said he'd already lost Coach and he couldn't go through the loss of another person.

I'd stared him straight in the eye, trying in vain not to let too much emotion show in my own eyes, and told him that he would have to man up. To continue on. That if I died, I wanted to know that I'd given my life up for something better than just a defeat.

This was before Ellis began to deteriorate, to die a little day by day on the inside. This was before I began thinking of my own suicide. Again, more words I've gone against, for my death won't be helping anyone. There is safety in numbers, and I'm taking this security away from Rochelle and Ellis. I'm just as cruel as whatever force that had unleashed the flu is.

I hope that if I ever need to explain myself, I can use the excuse, "It was just my time to go, man. You know how it is."

Wait, if I'm going to hell, then I don't think I need to explain myself to anyone –

I hear one more boom of sound come from the Tank before something crashes into me, hitting me from behind the knees, taking me to the ground. My head hits first, my nose shattering and the blood spurting furiously hot against my face; my cheek scrapes against the sharp rocks that are strewn about the road, tearing my face to shreds.

Taken out from behind – my knees – but I'd been facing –

The ground shakes uncontrollably for a second right behind me, and I know the Tank has thrown the car, but –

God no –

Please no –

In the instant between being tackled from behind and having something land right where I'd been, I know: Ellis.

I twist around, my whole body aching and pounding, and I begin to scream, my voice reverberating off the pavement.

Ellis couldn't have done that. He wouldn't have.

The car squished him completely. Blood's spilling from beneath the car, the dark red liquid oozing toward me. I know there is no hope.

All I hear is the sound coming out of my mouth. Am I begging for help? cursing God? screaming because of the hole that was ripped in my heart?

Suddenly. Suddenly. Gone in an instant. Had Ellis known that this would happen?

I feel a shaking from behind me, and I know the Tank is lumbering over, intent on dropping the number of survivors further, leaving only Rochelle behind. Perhaps she's already pressed on, blinded by her tears. She too knows that there is no hope.

Had Rochelle tried to restrain Ellis? Had she tried in vain to keep her hold on his arm as he fought against her, watching as the Tank went after me and I didn't move? Had she screeched his name over and over as Ellis dove at me, pushing me out of the way? Had she felt the shock hit her body when he was crushed instead of me?

There's a foul smell emanating from behind me now. I don't turn; I pay it no attention. I keep looking at the blood, how it's continuing to move, how deep a red it is. How precious and important it is. How Ellis doesn't need it anymore. I also can't help but stare at the hand extended toward me, bathed in blood. Ellis' hand. His right hand. The one that I had –

The car had landed on his head. His fucking head. His hat and all.

I begin to laugh hysterically. At least he died with his hat on his head, the one he loved so much and would never part with. He even slept in the damn thing.

There's heat too, right behind me. It's wafting toward me, and I can't help but feel disgusted. I shiver.

Perhaps the Tank is sizing me up, wondering what the hell's going through my mind. I don't even know. All I can feel is pain. It's in my finger tips, it's in my toes; it's in my head, my heart, my stomach. I can't feel anything else. And right now, all I want is for it to be over. More than anything, I want to just die.

Perhaps I'll see –

I reach out to Ellis and grasp his hand as the tears start to flow from my green eyes, down past my still-laughing mouth, and land on the grubby, hot asphalt. His hand is still warm, the skin rough and calloused, just like I remember, and I keep expecting him to squeeze back. He doesn't.

I still don't turn around.


End file.
